the mother he's convinced himself doesn't exist
she’s never once asked me whether Booboo and I hear from you? Not once. A sort of appalled pride. She’s ashamed of even hurting over it
Context
Hal reports the far end of Orin's silence: the mother so wounded by being cut off that she has stopped even asking whether her other sons hear from the son who erased her, hurting in a way she's ashamed to show. It sets Orin's whole no-contact policy against its cost — the person he "tells himself he's convinced himself she doesn't even exist" is meanwhile performing her own silence out of pride, so that the family's central relationship survives only as two people each refusing to be the one who speaks first.